As the coronavirus continues to change just about every aspect of life as we knew it, I can feel the collective impulse to panic or resist. To plan ahead, as if we really could know the future. To buy our way out of this, as if one extra purchase of toilet paper or sanitizer could protect us from anxiety of the unknown. To predict the future to avoid pain, as if we really could. To make, or do, or monetize, or strategize to get away from the discomfort of watching the structures of our complex lives dissolve. These are such understandable impulses.
Instead, I am noticing in moments a certain kind of peace. A fallow peace.
The truth is I have been in fallow times anyway. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in fall 2018, and have recently completed the major forms of treatment. Before that, I was sick with mold illness and our family was displaced from our home for six months. We lost most of our possessions and our financial security. Life as we knew it has really fallen apart over the last three years for us. Because of longtime compromised immunity, I have been quietly thinking about infectious vectors, with hand sanitizer in my purse, for a few years. Weirdly, my (perhaps neurotic) measures are suddenly the cultural norm. Strangely, the unwanted crises of the last few years have actually seasoned me for this new Covid-19 reality. So perhaps I can be of service, to share what lessons I have learned from being a few years into a Health-Driven Change of Fortune.
Improvisation
First, the reality has asked me to be in a constant improvisation with life. I make plans with some amusement, as I can never really know what will happen next. And yet, plan we must, to some degree. For example, since cancer treatment I have been enamored with swimming. It helps with many of the side effects of cancer treatment and also elevates my mood. Because of coronavirus, I have not been in a pool for about two weeks. While this makes me very sad, I have tried to keep swimming. The other day I put my belly on a wood floor and lifted my limbs into the strokes, rolling slightly back and forth on my organs. I’m pretty sure it helped, even because it makes me laugh to think about it. And no need to change into a bathing suit! The key has been to hold on lightly to any plan, allowing for the plan to evolve. Crisis is not a good time to hold on to being consistent, but rather a time to pivot, to be open to the unknown, to change former habits and perceptions, and to truly clear the slate. I found recently on a scrap of paper a quote my husband had scribbled down, “It is easier to pivot while in motion.” This improvisational state requires letting go, and constant commitment to reorientation. I honor that this is a scary practice. And also a worthwhile one.
I used to work with a woman that used crisis as opportunity in a way that still brings tears of wonder to my eyes. She had been sold from her own war-torn country into indentured slavery for a very wealthy and abusive family in the Middle East.* This family had business in New York, and as their domestic servant, she flew with them into JFK airport. On September 11, 2001. On that historic day, as utter terror and chaos was unfolding around her in the airport, this brave woman let go. She cleared the slate. She ran away. She was able to get asylum in the United States and is now safe from her abusers. If it weren’t for the crisis on September 11th, that brave woman might still be a domestic servant in the Middle East. How can the current crisis conditions also open us up to new unexpected freedoms?
Fallowness
In farming, the fallow time is the time that builds the soil. The soil is potent, full of creative potential, but the wise farmer does not try to extract every resource from the land until it is depleted. Instead, she waits, trusting the time to plant will come. This not-so-wise farmer once impatiently planted a dahlia in the most visible spot in our yard, but I did not take the time to treat the soil first. I am ever hopeful each year when the dahlia greens poke up from the soil, but it has yet to flower. I am tolerating fallowness. Fallowness, in the current public health crisis, allows us to unplug from the great assumptions, the great fullness of life. We step off of the frenetic treadmill of constant busyness and then ask, now what? What is essential? What is necessary today? What matters, really?
Allowing grief
As my health has improved, I have felt impulses to do more, to make life complex again. The pattern goes like this: I have some energy again! If I have energy, I should use it. I will resume an identity that I had previously let go! It will be great. So far, most frequently I realize that it is better not to take each new opportunity or impulse, not to fill the empty space, but instead to be quieter for now. This has been a time for me to practice tolerating simplicity, and my own fallowness. It is not so comfortable for my ego. But I am trusting that if I wait long enough, rest long enough, the right action becomes clear. If I really exhale all the way to the bottom of empty, I cannot help but feel the innumerable losses of this time. There is incredible grief, personally and also collectively. The emptying process of grief cannot be skipped. And, at some point, after the grief, the next right action, and the next inhalation, will come reflexively.
Welcoming the Unknown
None of us will see life in quite the same way after living through this public health crisis. Many of us are being forced to slow down, to do less, to focus on the essentials. When we are stripped down in this way, we lose the buffers that insulate us from looking at vulnerability, the vulnerability to illness and death that has been here all along, but brushed under the rug. That rug has suddenly been pulled out from under us. Let’s take this fallow time to really take a look—what is under that rug? When our stark vulnerability and the inevitable reality of death feels so very close, what is most important? How do I want to spend this precious moment now?
We have never seen times like these. I can allow myself to be forever changed by this experience, and welcome it. I look forward to the as-yet-unknown outcomes of this time. I am curious what we will learn, how we will live differently now, how this crisis makes both our interdependence and our unsustainable ways so nakedly evident. What unexpected fruits will come from this fallow time?
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I am feeling moved to share more, in a way that I hope will be of service. Stay tuned here for an evolving rough guide to navigating a health crisis.
*Identifying details of this story have been removed to protect the safety of those involved.
